A A vibrant and historic city located on the banks of the beautiful Lake Zurich, crossed by the Limmat River and with over 40 “Badis” (lidos) to bathe in during the summer months, Zurich is a unique destination brimming with creativity, culture, couture and culinary delights.
Beyond the boutiques of Bahnhofstrasse, its world-class museums and its dizzying array of restaurants for foodies, Zurich is a city steeped in culture and cultural history, and remains a world-class centre for modern design.
The foundations for cultural innovation were laid decades ago, when Zurich was a haven for exiled writers, artists, composers and even revolutionaries. The Dada movement, a reaction to the horrors of World War I, gave rise to a taste for the avant-garde. From 1916 onwards, artists gathered at the Cabaret Voltaire, a noisy venue where they staged anti-bourgeois protests in their poems, collages and dance performances that paved the way for later surrealist and pop art movements.
A few decades later, in the 1950s and 1960s, Swiss graphic design gained international fame with the birth of Helvetica, the popular sans-serif typeface. Today, Zurich is a typography enthusiast’s delight: just stroll through the old town and you’ll discover a multitude of modernist fonts. Make sure your path winds towards Zurich-Westthe former industrial district. Once the headquarters of shipbuilding and mechanical engineering, today visitors will find a multitude of design boutiques and markets under the railway arches.
The city welcomes a crowd calendar of events throughout the year, with a range of exhibitions and concertsBut don't miss these highlights:
Breathtaking treasures
The collection at the Kunsthaus ZurichSwitzerland’s largest art museum is housed in an elegant Greek Revival Secession-style version from 1910 and David Chipperfield’s light-filled 2021 extension. It spans more than a millennium, with works from the Middle Ages to the present day. In addition to paintings by Picasso, Munch, Van Gogh and Chagall, and more modern masters such as Warhol and Rothko, the museum also features a wealth of Swiss artists, including the elongated figurative sculptures of Giacometti and the brilliant irony of Peter Fischli and David Weiss.
The Kunsthaus Zurich is the city's largest museum, with a collection of works from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Credit: Silvano Zeiter, Zurich Tourism
Design classics
Nestled in a listed white cube of a 1930s modernist building, the Gestaltung Museum – Ausstellungsstrasse (Design Museum) explores excellence in form and function, from the iconic Victorinox Swiss Army knife to the Helvetica font. Time your visit to the city to coincide with the three-week festival Design Weeks (12-29 September 2024) and explore disciplines such as textiles, interiors and circular design through a series of exhibitions, talks, workshops and other events across the city. The theme of this year’s Design Weeks is ‘Good News’ – sustainable ideas and innovations, big and small, that inspire optimism.
The Gestaltung Museum presents works of art and design that demonstrate excellence in form and function.
Credit: Adrian Bretschur, Hangar Ent. Band
Contemporary trends
Above the former Löwenbräu-Areal brewery are two skyscrapers, which combine the old industrial building of Zurich-West with a modern aesthetic. The brewery has been converted to house two museums: the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art and the Kunsthalle Zurich. The first houses the diverse collection of Gottlieb Duttweiler, founder of Migros, Switzerland’s largest retailer. Of the 1,300 works on display, just over a third are by Swiss artists, including Urs Fischer and Christoph Schlingensief, but the collection extends to Yoko Ono and other international stars. Head to the Kunsthalle for up to 10 solo and group exhibitions a year featuring works by contemporary artists, as well as a programme of lectures.
Benefits of Navigation
The expansion of the Kunsthaus Zurich led to the blossoming of galleries around the Heimplatz Museum. In a city that already houses 60 museums and more than 100 galleries, the Galleries in the Zurich districtClose to the Santiago Calatrava-designed Stadelhofen train station and the shores of Lake Zurich, it is a good place to keep up with the latest trends in the art scene, visiting revered landmarks including the Eva Presenhuber GalleryTHE Levy-Gorvy with Rumbler gallery and the Rämistrasse gallery Hauser & Wirth showroom.
All aboard the designer tram
One of Zurich's ubiquitous visual symbols are the trams, which have been part of the cityscape since the 1880s, with the launch of the first horse-drawn tram. It is therefore fitting that today, Tram Line 4 acts as a sort of party bus, connecting some of the city's biggest cultural highlights, with important galleries and historic sites at many of its 26 stops. Gestaltung Museum (Design Museum) alone has three exhibition spaces along the route – the Toni-Areal in Zurich West, the main building near Zurich main station and the Le Corbusier Paviliona museum dedicated to and designed by the modern French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier, in an incomparable location on the shores of Lake Zurich.
The Pavillon Le Corbusier museum was designed and dedicated to the Swiss modernist artist Le Corbusier.
Credit: Zurich Tourism
The line takes visitors through the trendy Zurich West district, past the colorful shipping container tower that marks the flagship store of Fridaythe Zurich brand known for making bags and accessories from recycled tarpaulins. The line also stops at Löwenbräu area for a tour of some of the latest contemporary artistic creations.
Drive to the Bahnhofquai/HB stop and go back in time to National Museum Zurichwhich tells the cultural history of Switzerland through objects such as crafts, sculptures, paintings and everyday objects from prehistory to the present day.
Old meets new in the industrial-looking Löwenbräu-Areal brewery, now a venue for contemporary art and design
Get off in the old town centre two stops later or in Zurich, Rudolf-Brun-Brücke, and you will be in a whole other cultural world, at Visionary Museuma collection of Art Brut, or “outsider art,” which has developed outside the cultural mainstream.
Students of Zurich's cultural history will find the eighth stop, Rathaus, a must-see, with its Cabaret Voltairethe former cradle of Dadaism, which is today a café and a platform for contemporary art and debate.
The birthplace of Dadaism, the Cabaret Voltaire is still today a center for discussion and cultural debate.
Credit: Cabaret Voltaire
In the middle of line 4, visitors can visit the Kunsthaus Zurich, then the Opera House, before continuing to Zurich Center for ArchitectureZAZ Bellerive, and Windmilla museum exploring food culture, with its own on-site pastry school.
Discover Switzerland
Swiss is easily accessible by train from London or by Swiss International Airlines. And once you land, the Zurich Map gives you free access to all public transport in Zurich and the surrounding area as well as free or reduced access to museums, tours and attractions.
Learn more about what to see and do in Zurich
